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What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

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Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#171

Post by mlyle »

rglullis wrote: post #145
rrdharan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The marshmallow test has been debunked (just like so many other flashy claims in the social sciences field, the science is questionable and the replication crisis is very real). So using it in a rant about how uninformed people are is itself a laughable irony. 2. Many of us simply do not agree that the use of an Apple computing device impinges on either our privacy or basic freedoms, or (more nuanced) that the mar…

1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers. 2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken. You can argue that you don't value this freedom over the convenience it bring…

> 1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers.

Can you explain to me what the long term gain I could expect, exactly, by foregoing a MacOS laptop?

I have lots of computing devices; many are Linux, a couple are Windows, and I have an Apple laptop.

This follows two attempts at a Linux laptop, with crummier hardware in many ways, and many inconveniences from Linux-on-the-desktop sucking. It just works, and I have lots of battery life.

> 2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken.

Am I supposed to be a free software zealot? If my computer sucks, that also impinges on my freedom.

Yes, there may be some hypothetical ability to clone lots and lots of repos and do a lot of troubleshooting and cure one source of suck-- and then argue with upstream maintainers and kowtow until eventually my fix is accepted. When the sources of suck on Linux outnumber the sources of suck on MacOS by a reasonably high multiple, I'd rather keep the MacOS device in my bag than the other machines I have that run Linux.

If you're going to argue about some kind of collective loss by many people making the same choice as me-- that we all lose freedom, etc-- spare me. Tragedy of the commons, etc: not enough people are going to make the choice you're posing to have any significant effect.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#172

Post by smoldesu »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #163
sjcoles wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try out Fedora! There's Fedora Rawhide if you want rolling release. I have been using Rawhide (+ mainline, non rc or git, kernel) on my work machine for the past 6 months without issue. If you have to compile a lot of kmods it can be a pain as everything is transitioning to GCC12 but the kernels are still built with GCC11. A container can take care of that though.

I really want to like Fedora - it gets so much right. But: `yum` is the worst package manager I have ever used on linux by far, and that sours the whole experience. I wish I could get "Fedora with pacman/apt instead".

Hm, maybe try using Nix alongside it?

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#173

Post by grumbel »

gotaquestion wrote: post #148
koprulusector wrote: post #93

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

A system should only be a mystery in so far that you were too lazy to look up how exactly something works. Having "undocumented service" running wild should be unacceptable, even so it has become so common place. Linux isn't free of this, far too many times there is no man-page to tell you what something does, but at least you can dig into the source if you have to.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#174

Post by jmull »

koprulusector wrote: post #93

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

The existence of a Mac OS service you don't immediately understand really has nothing to do with Apple's stance on digital privacy. There's no logical connection here.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#175

Post by smoldesu »

gigaflop wrote: post #123
koprulusector wrote: post #93

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

This reminds me of Windows Search Indexer on my PC. Microsoft's spying aside, it apparently needs 13.5% or more of my CPU at all times. It started after I updated multiple time sin a row, and for the past few weeks, has never stopped. I've killed it via task manager, only to have it come back shortly after.

Even worse is the Mac search indexer. Ever wonder why your CPU temps are pinned at 90c in low-power mode? Open activity monitor, cmd+f for mdworker, and you found your culprit. It's insane that they enable thay be default...

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#176

Post by reaperducer »

BluSyn wrote: post #29
oefrha wrote: post #17

I just looked into ~/Library/Trial on my main machine (macOS 12.2.1). I got 380MB spread over 584 files (while TFA's author got 300k???). Most if not all of them are related to com.apple.siri.asr.dictation.en_US. Close to 100% of the space is taken up by .fst files, e.g. $ file /path/to/msg-bigG.squeezed_quantized_acceptor.fst /path/to/msg-bigG.squeezed_quantized_acceptor.fst: OpenFst binary FST data, fst type: squee…

I checked mine, and I see lots of mention of "Siri" (TEXT TO SPEECH, FIND MY, etc). Seems most likely this is A/B testing for ML models, such as those for Siri and Photos analysis? That's my best guess. Since Siri and Photos now processes more locally (especially on M1's dedicated ML cores), all the training improvements and testing probably happen locally as well. It makes sense it would regularly download updates f…

I checked mine, and I see lots of mention of "Siri" (TEXT TO SPEECH, FIND MY, etc). Seems most likely this is A/B testing for ML models, such as those for Siri and Photos analysis?

My guess is dictation.

My Trial folder is about 500MB. I've never enabled Siri on my computers declining the option during the setup at first boot. But I do use dictation quite a bit.

If 500MB is the cost of having dictation work solely on my laptop without hitting the internet, I'm OK with it.

The problem is that people love to invent conspiracy theories about Apple because they have an axe to grind.

They get opportunities to do so because of two things: Many of Apple's daemons and other services are not publicly documented. And because it's running a flavor of Unix, it is a lot easier for amateur computer sleuths to poke about and discover what's running that people outside of Apple don't know about.

Operating systems of the past were more opaque, so we just had to blindly trust the manufacturer. But people can see things better now. It would help rebuild trust if Apple would have a standard reference online explaining all of its OS bits.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#177

Post by smoldesu »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #11
sdfjkl wrote: post #6

Open source is where you don't have to apply guesswork to find out what a suspicious looking piece of software is doing on your computer.

Nope, instead you have to apply guesswork to figure out why an apt-get call accidentally uninstalled your desktop environment. :P

Sure thing, Linus...

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#178

Post by [deleted] »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #165
gotaquestion wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

What's your point?. That since some software doesn't play nice and doesn't treat its users with respect, we shouldn't value all the software that does? I don't find this agreeable

[deleted]

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#179

Post by gotaquestion »

grumbel wrote: post #173
gotaquestion wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

A system should only be a mystery in so far that you were too lazy to look up how exactly something works. Having "undocumented service" running wild should be unacceptable, even so it has become so common place. Linux isn't free of this, far too many times there is no man-page to tell you what something does, but at least you can dig into the source if you have to.

Not with 3rd party drivers. I think people fetishize the desire to have complete control, and it is a myth. I've been using Linux since 1997, and all the fighting for transparency has been a tempest in a teapot with no progress made at ALL.

If people wanted to fight for it, stop using NVIDIA products, but do you see that happening? Not bloody likely.

This isn't so much whataboutism as it is about trying to coerce an ecosystem of hundreds of vendors to listen to a small cadre of open source proponents.

If the Linux kernel forces AMD to improve UAI and make it look like LAM, I'd consider that a victory. Let's see what happens.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#180

Post by rglullis »

mlyle wrote: post #171
rglullis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers. 2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken. You can argue that you don't value this freedom over the convenience it bring…

> 1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers. Can you explain to me what the long term gain I could expect, exactly, by foregoing a MacOS laptop? I have lots of computing devices; many are Linux, a couple are Windows, and I have an Apple…

> Can you explain to me what the long term gain I could expect, exactly, by foregoing a MacOS laptop?

You would not be contributing to an ecosystem controlled by a single entity who is increasingly abusing their dominance to extract more rent from consumers and other developers.

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